Snow changing to sleet, freezing rain on South Shore

Snow totals are in the range of 5 to 9 inches across the South Shore. A winter storm warning will expire at 6 p.m. Wednesday in Plymouth and Bristol counties, but it will remain in effect until 1 a.m. Thursday from Norfolk County west and north.

The second round of snow for this week coincides with the 36th anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978.

"This is two years in a row that we have blizzards lining up right around that same date for the Blizzard of '78," said Eleanor Vallier-Talbot, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton.

The epic storm of 1978 bludgeoned the Boston to Rhode Island corridor along Interstate 95, dumping 2 to 3 feet of snow.

"During the height of the storm some places were getting hit with as much as 3 inches of snow an hour," she said.

"I'll never forget it personally. I was in West Quincy and it snowed to no end for two days," Vallier-Talbot said.

A series of weather events helped build the Blizzard of '78 into a monster, Vallier-Talbot said.

Those elements included a huge high pressure area toward Greenland that was stalled south of Cape Cod and the islands and did a loop south of Martha's Vineyard, she said.

That combined with astronomical high tides and a new moon and a raging wind out of the northeast contributed to major coastal flooding.